20 Cron Job Examples for Common Schedules

The fastest way to write a correct cron expression is to find a working example close to your schedule and adapt it. This reference covers 20 common cron schedules grouped by frequency — from every-minute health checks to annual year-end jobs — with the expression, plain-English description, and the use case it serves.

For a complete explanation of cron syntax including wildcards, step values, and ranges, see the complete cron expression syntax guide. To build expressions visually with next-run-time preview, use the Cron Job Generator.

What are the most common every-hour and every-minute cron schedules?

Pro tip — offset from the hour: Using 7 * * * * or23 * * * * instead of 0 * * * * prevents multiple cron jobs from spiking CPU and database connections simultaneously at the top of every hour. Stagger jobs by 5–15 minutes when you have multiple hourly tasks.

What are common daily cron job examples?

Important: Cloud servers run UTC by default. "9:00 AM" in a cron expression means 9:00 AM UTC — which is 4:00 AM EST or 1:00 AM PST. Always calculate the UTC equivalent of your intended local time, or set the TZ variable at the top of your crontab. For a full explanation of the timezone problem and how to fix it, see debugging cron jobs that run at the wrong time.

What are common weekly cron job examples?

What are common monthly cron job examples?

What are examples of quarterly and annual cron jobs?

How do you run a cron job only on the first Monday of the month?

Standard cron cannot express "first Monday of the month" directly — when both the day-of-month and day-of-week fields are set (not *), most cron implementations use OR logic, not AND. The workaround is to use a script-level check:

# Run on all Mondays, but check day of month inside the script
0 9 * * 1 /path/to/script.sh

# Inside script.sh:
if [ $(date +%d) -le 7 ]; then
  # Only runs if today is the 1st through 7th — first Monday only
  run_monthly_job
fi

Key takeaways

• Offset hourly jobs from the top of the hour (7 * * * * instead of 0 * * * *) to prevent simultaneous load spikes.
• All cron times on cloud servers are UTC by default — calculate your UTC equivalent or set TZ= in crontab.
• For "first Monday of the month," use a script-level date check — cron's OR logic for day fields makes this impossible to express natively.
• Use the Cron Job Generator to validate any expression and see the next 5 run times before deploying.
• For the complete syntax reference including wildcards, step values, and ranges, see the cron expression syntax guide.

Frequently asked questions

How do I run a cron job every 2 hours?

Use 0 */2 * * * — this fires at 0:00, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00...22:00 UTC. The */2 means "every 2 hours starting from 0." If you want it to start at 1:00 AM instead, use 0 1-23/2 * * *.

How do I run a cron job on the last day of the month?

Standard five-field cron does not natively support "last day of month." The cleanest workaround: run daily and check inside the script whether tomorrow is the 1st of the next month — if so, execute the month-end logic. Some cron implementations (Quartz Scheduler, cloud schedulers) support an L character for last day.

What is the cron expression to run at midnight every Sunday?

0 0 * * 0 — minute 0, hour 0, any day of month, any month, day-of-week 0 (Sunday). Note: both 0 and 7 represent Sunday in cron.

How do I test a cron expression without waiting for the scheduled time?

Use the Cron Job Generator to see the next 5 scheduled run times. For live testing, temporarily change the expression to * * * * * (every minute), confirm the job fires and succeeds, then restore the original schedule. Always add output logging (>> /var/log/myjob.log 2>&1) so you can confirm execution.